UN Wants to Grab That Burger Right Out of Your Hands

By

Dan Gainor

June 9, 2010 - 3:33pm

The global nanny state wants to take another bite out of your freedom. Its new target – your dinner plate.

The Guardian reported on June 2 that the UN was supporting a switch to a radical anti-meat agenda. “A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change [1], a UN report said today [2],” wrote the paper.

Here’s how the group Vegan Action describes this extreme vegetarianism. “While vegetarians choose not to use flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, down, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals

The UN report is all about the environmental impact of “consumption and production,” or pretty much what humans do – eat and make stuff. It warns: “A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals goes even further. The group that fills the Internet with public relations stunts and actresses going naked rather than wearing fur, is even more radical than the UN. Peta says “animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other purpose.”

No leather belts. No leather shoes. No cheese. No eggs. No new medical technology because it was tested on Fluffy and her friends. Most of all, no meat, because animal flatulence is supposedly a major greenhouse gas. (Unless we can supply Beano to every cow on the planet.)

The UN is once again marginalizing itself. You hope.

Yes it’s hard to take the UN seriously, especially on climate change [3], where bogus statistics and claims are commonplace. But this isn’t the standard UN silliness. This is one more bite at the apple (I think that’s approved even by Peta) to get Westerners to change how they live. It’s all part of the global warming strategy to get us to give up living like civilized humans. The left wants us all to move back into caves, eat nuts and berries and live in harmony with Mother Nature.

Naturally, while the UN is having a cow about, well, you having a cow, the media are either silent or supportive.

Time magazine has already served up an article called “Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat.” The magazine spent more than 1,000 words giving us a taste of the new world order. “Do we really need to kill animals to live? Today, the hunger for meat is also contributing to the climate-change catastrophe.” The article goes on to give its readers something to chew on: “So the idea of fake meat has never been more alluring.”

Author John Cloud focused on people like “the creator of Tofurky and dean of soy-meat inventors,” producs like “a meat analogue” that he tried eating in three dishes. “None were very good.” Duh.

The dystopian dinner the author would have us eat isn’t quite cooked up yet. Thank God. But Time’s already marketing it as a complete substitute to our evil meat habit. The piece ends with this feel-good recipe: “Maybe one day you'll order a chicken fajita at Chili's that is made with soy. You almost certainly won't notice the difference, but the planet will.”

Predictably, the New York Times wants to play diet doctor too. On March 21, it profiled “Clueless” actress Alicia Silverstone, who has become a Peta poster child and a strident anti-meat moron (oops, vegan) ever since she had a heart-to-heart with her dog.

“At one point I looked at my dog, who was my best friend, and I thought, If I’m not going to eat you, then how can I eat these other creatures who have the same capacity for love and joy,” said the budding Doctor Doolittle. What the dog thought, we don’t know. But “The karma of turning vegan is amazing,” [4] she told the author.

Another Times story from November underscored the rising popularity of this crazy diet because 1 percent of the population, including “celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres” participate. That story also quoted one vegan making the typical media claim, “veganism has become hipper.” [5]

Carnivores like the remaining 300 million-plus Americans are still in charge, but the left and the media will keep singing the glories of this obscure diet until even shoe leather isn’t on the menu. By then, eco-fascism will have sucked the life out of living and taken away everything not approved by some gray bureaucrat.

Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and the MediaResearchCenter’s Vice President for Business [6]and Culture[7]. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.